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In northwestern Uzbekistan, drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) are spreading while only one in 10 people with TB receives treatment. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has treated more than 2,000 people with drug-resistant TB in Uzbekistan over the last 10 years.

Her coffin had already been built when Rohatay TagsAbdullaeva learned she could get help in her native Uzbekistan. As World TB Day approaches, MSF celebrates her good health, but also remembers the huge number of people with TB who cannot get the help they need.

Photographer and MSF field worker Misha Friedman visited MSF's tuberculosis project in Nukus, western Uzbekistan, where he met patients with heartbreaking stories: a 19-year-old man whose year and a half of difficult treatment for multi drug-resistance TB (MDR-TB) did not work; a 16-year-old boy who has recovered but feels the stigma of having had TB; a young woman weighing 50 pounds, holding on to hope that her treatment will be effective.